... online game dollars ;-)
from: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060828-7605.html
It might have been a scene out of some movie about the Great
Depression. Hundreds of frantic people tearing their hair out as they
mob the doors to a bank, only to realize that the bank's owners, along
with their money, had vanished into thin air.
This scene, however, took place not in some seemingly distant
historical period, but much closer to home (for some of us). The
location was EVE Online—a science-fiction-based MMORPG, and the bank
was the Eve Intergalactic Bank—a privately run in-game institution
that for several months convinced EVE Online players to deposit their
spare "money" into accounts with the enticement of accruing several
points of interest per month. That seemingly virtuous idea came to a
crashing halt when the proprietor of the EIB, known to the game
universe as "Cally," absconded with around 790 billion simoleons
ISK—the currency of the EVE Online world.
<snip>
Now here is the weird part:
---------
It has been estimated that the stolen 790 billion ISK could fetch as
much as $170,000 in the real-world marketplace
---------
-JP<who would spend 170k on _anything_ but fake money>